superniceone | tfln overflow / open post

Gustave laughs out loud at that. Merde, they're meant to be sleeping, but there's something soothing about a no-stakes conversation. He still has questions: is Verso still going to bring Julie back? Is he going to let the others know what happened, way back when?

But, for now at least, it feels okay to let that lie. Maybe just for a few hours.

"I really only need them when I'm tinkering," he exhales — and maybe reading, a little, too, but he's reductant to admit that for some reason. "And I didn't plan on doing much tinkering on the Continent."

"You'll be doing more now." Out of practicality, but also out of enjoyment, he assumes (and hopes). There's only so much research to be done in a day, particularly when their research question is so very vague. He likes to imagine that their daily schedule will be something like— wake up, do degenerate things to each other, kill some Nevrons and drag their corpses back for study, dinner, Gustave tinkers with a project while Verso tries to master the guitar, do degenerate things to each other again, sleep.

He's open to suggestions, though.

"We'll have to hide you from the gestrals or they'll be all over you begging for you to build them a new Sakapatate."

Gustave has only ever lived in Lumière; he still hasn't quite thought in too much detail about what the specifics of a life anywhere else might look like. The idea of having time to tinker just for fun again, though? It's appealing.

"You know, I might not actually mind that," he muses. He pauses, then adds: "Know I said you didn't have to prove anything, but it's not nice to be left in limbo."

He said he loved you!!! And you left him on read!!!

Ow. It hurts his head something fierce to laugh, but he can't help it. "Come on," he grouses, although not without affection. "I said you were my light in the darkness."

Saying 'I love you' feels so obvious as to be superfluous. It's difficult to remember that he's only said it aloud a small handful of times, and that Gustave doesn't live in his head where it's been a given that Verso is obsessed with him for quite a while now. No, he lives in this world, the one where Verso has jerked him around and lied to him and tried to break it off a truly indefensible amount of times.

All right—it's more than fair to request reciprocation.

"Je t'aime," he acquiesces. "Very much so, if you need that spelled out for you, too."

Nothing about any of this feels obvious to him. Nothing about anything does, really, but that might actually have more to do with the fact that part of him is still reeling in the face of reality, especially when Sciel and Lune both seem to be adjusting fine.

"I thought you were just— humoring my sentimentality until very recently, you know." It's the same toothless sort of bellyaching. The idea of Verso genuinely reciprocating was — too ideal, really, when he'd spent so long on the Continent assuming the way Verso fled was because Gustave was asking for more than he was able to give. "Sue me. It's nice to hear."

And he does very much sound pleased about it.

For the millionth time this morning, he feels a surge of relief that Gustave wasn't scared off by his confession. Listening to that contented lilt of his voice is like being wrapped in a warm blanket. "Then je t'aime, mon cher," he says, tired but amused. He goes for a lazy kiss to Gustave's cheek and accidentally gets his ear instead. "You can hear it any time you like."

—Less cozy than being wrapped in a warm blanket is the reminder that Gustave really believed he was being humored, though. "You're ridiculous, by the way."

He'd liked Gustave during all of it. Only a little bit at first, sure, but it had ballooned out of control much more quickly than he'd been comfortable with. It's just that instead of butterflies in his stomach, he'd mostly just felt like throwing up from guilt.

"Only you could imagine that my inventing excuses to talk to you was humoring."

Gustave is pretty sure that's the first time he can remember his ear being tickled by someone else's beard before, and he swallows down the reflexive little laugh that threatens to bubble up.

(He wonders briefly if it's bad of him to wait until they're on the Continent again to ask some of the more uncomfortable questions about the things Verso has revealed, to wait until they're somewhere that will make running harder for the both of them. He's pretty sure it's either a great idea or just a selfish one, but he doesn't have the energy to spend figuring it out right now.)

"I was one of the three other human adults in the group," Gustave counters, pretty openly amused. "It would've been much stranger if you didn't talk to me."

Well— yes.

When he puts it that way, it makes all of the excuses Verso made for them to just happen to be talking feel a little... silly. At the time, though, it had felt impossible just to approach Gustave and say 'hi'.

"You could have told me that before I chopped off my hand for a reason to talk to you." One of his worse moments. "Concocting all of those plans was exhausting."

It occurs to Gustave that they'd spent relatively little time actually time talking at night, even after they'd begun almost wordlessly sleeping in reach of each other.

"Well, it's good you know now, then," he mumbles, the corner of his lip twitching into a smile. "I do, actually, prefer all your limbs attached." Is he fighting sleep like an overgrown toddler so he can keep existing in this comfortable liminal space where imminent and urgent problems seem a little further away? Maybe.

"More flattering words have never been spoken," he says dryly, although he's smiling, too.

At some point last night, Verso passed out; it hadn't been a restful sleep—too anxious—but it had been more sleep than Gustave had said he'd gotten. Still, the hangover makes him want to shut his eyes for at least the next hour, and Gustave is warm enough next to him that he can imagine dozing. He takes a deep breath in and out, quiet for a second, as if he might let the conversation lie there.

—Wait, one last thing. "Je t'aime." Now he's good to go. He snoozes lightly, a catnap more than a real, deep sleep; even after he wakes, he pretends to be asleep until he feels Gustave rousing, loath to wake him before he's rested.

When he finally does hear the telltale rustle of movement beside him, he says, quietly, "Hey." There's a little bit of tightness in his stomach, worry that maybe rest has made Gustave see things clearly and that his acceptance earlier had only been the product of sleeplessness. "—Want me to make eggs?"

It's possible that's one of the only things he knows how to make.

Gustave sleeps long enough to have a few scattered, fractured dreams. He'd very much hoped that they would settle down when he was back, safe in Lumière, surrounded by family and friends, but it's like the peace around him has only somehow fed into it. He's grateful not to remember any real details when he wakes, just a dull feeling of fear, of grief. (He's fairly certain Verso featured in at least one, which is not something you could torture out of him — he has a feeling he knows exactly what kind of reaction that would elicit.)

"Hey," he murmurs, body warm and heavy despite his racing mind; he rolls over to grab Verso by the waist and hides a yawn in the curve of his neck. "Mon beau. Neither of us want your eggs."

Relief bubbles up and manifests as a slightly giddy laugh. Thank god sleep hasn't made Gustave come to his senses. If it were anyone else but himself, Verso would be strongly discouraging Gustave from trusting a confessed murderer around his unconscious body, but— he can endorse bad decision making if it benefits him.

"I could improve," he argues, although it doesn't even sound convincing to himself.

If eggs are off the table, though, he sees no reason to force himself up yet. He smooths down a little of Gustave's bedhead with his fingers as he notes, idly, "You twitch in your sleep sometimes." He hadn't noticed it before, when they were sleeping within arm's reach but decidedly not close enough to feel the minute movements of Gustave's body. It's not an accusation of bad dreams, exactly, but it is an opening if he wants to discuss it.

It wasn't like Verso had been short on opportunity to off him, if that had been a goal at any point. And — regardless — Gustave wants to believe that Verso had good cause for what he'd done. That things wouldn't have ended that way if he'd had any other choice. Would Verso want to bring her back if that wasn't the case?

But it's easier to tilt his head a little into the touch of Verso's hand instead of pursuing lines of thought life that one, so that's what he does. "Nightmares," he exhales after a moment's deliberation, like he's ashamed to be caught having them. "I didn't realize I was moving around. You can wake me up if it bothers you."

"Bothers me," Verso repeats, eyebrow quirked. It hadn't bothered him, even when Gustave's little movements had woken him from his light slumber. He'd felt a little concerned, maybe, but if anything, it had been nice to have the physical reminder of someone next to him. It's been a very, very long time since he felt comfortable enough to sleep this close to another human being.

"Looks, brains, and he's endearingly self-effacing, too." It's a tease, but also a mild admonishment. "I'm not sure you're capable of being bothersome."

Check back in once they have to share a tiny, shitty hut.

But. "—Would you like me to wake you from them?"

It's fine—Verso can just go sleep in the outhouse when they're getting on each other's nerves. 😌

"It's not—" Gustave is leaning back enough to look at him more easily, very careful to telegraph his defensiveness as lighthearted. "I'm not self-effacing because I think my twitching at night is disturbing my bed partner. That's an extremely reasonable question to ask."

He exhales, then rolls back onto his own pillow. "And— I don't know. Might as well just stop sleeping," he says in the sort of tone most people would use to talk about an annoying inconvenience and definitely not constant trauma-induced stress dreams.

Gustave rolls away, and Verso rolls toward him. slinging an arm across his body in a way that he hopes feels comforting and protective. "That often?" He frowns. Dreams of any kind are infrequent for him these days, nightmares included, but he remembers when he used to get them habitually. He'd never felt rested upon waking. No wonder Gustave fell asleep sitting up on his divan.

"It's just a theory," he says, fumbling for his words because he's really not one to be giving advice. "But have you ever thought that maybe—" Maybe. He's not fully committing to this sentiment, in case it actually sucks. "You're less all right in your waking life than you're willing to admit?"

Gustave lifts his hand almost reflexively and gently combs through the ends of Verso's hair with his fingers; it's a habit that's just as much nervous distraction as it is affection.

"I—" He starts, then swallows, his eyes on the ceiling. Verso is close enough that he'll be able to see the way the muscle in his jaw clenches, relaxes, before he continues. "I made it through alive. I nearly gave up on them. On everyone." With that gun pressed to his temple, he means, even if he doesn't say those words out loud. "I don't have the luxury of being— my nervous system just needs to catch up to my brain and realize everything is fine again. It hasn't been that long since we returned to Lumière."

"You've given up far less times than you had reason to," he points out, a crease forming between his eyebrows. Gustave's been in one helpless, hopeless situation after another after landing on that beach. It can't have been easy, especially after dedicating his life to a mission that had been doomed within sixty seconds of disembarking their ship.

"Is it the beach that troubles you? Or..." The Stone Wave Cliffs? Perhaps being gommaged? Finding out that he's the equivalent of a doll in Maelle's dollhouse? All of the above? The Dessendre family has really racked up their offenses against Gustave. "Something else?"

"I don't know." It always seems to start on the beach. Gustave has never resented his crystal-clear memory before, nor his sharp eye for details; they're the reason his journal is filled with such details notes and sketches about the things they'd seen, Nevrons they'd faced. It's that excellent, horrible memory that causes him to re-live those moments over and over.

He can smell the blood on the air, the sting of his eyes from the spray of sand around them as they scrambled to defend themselves. He can hear Lucien's voice ringing in his ears, and even though it's been ostensibly fixed now: Gustave won't ever forgive himself for the way he had locked up.

He swallows again, tries: "I was— I wanted to die, I think, when Renoir— in the caves, I mean. I kept thinking, if I'm protecting Maelle, at least it'll mean something." Even now he can't shake off the survivor's guilt, and he makes an unhappy sort of noise in his throat, changes tack.

"You didn't sign up to be my therapist. Things will improve."

Oh.

Verso frowns, struck by that admission. It's so— blunt. I wanted to die. Nausea curls in his gut at the sound of it. He can remember that moment vividly. His pulse had been racing at the thought of coming face-to-face with Maelle, of this moment being the moment that finally turned the tide in his direction. Up until the very last second, he'd been willing to let Gustave die. Even when he'd stepped in, it hadn't been because it was the right thing to do. It had been for Maelle.

The knowledge that Gustave had been resigned to his death, perhaps even welcoming it, at that moment makes him feel queasy, but he tries his best not to look it as he moves his hand to brush fingers against Gustave's cheek. Soothing, he hopes. "Do you still... feel like that?"

The gentleness in Verso's touch and tone both are both comforting and guilt-inducing. How many people had Verso had to watch die? How many people would still be able to hold themselves upright after watching their father and sisters erased in front of them, one by one?

"No. I—" He laughs shakily, like the thought is ridiculous. "Of course not. I won't be running off on any suicide missions while we're out there, don't worry."

Mm. That laugh isn't very convincing! But he's loath to call Gustave a liar, so he just runs his thumb over that bristled jaw instead. "I'm glad you're still here."

And he is. Maybe things would have turned out differently if he'd let Gustave die that evening on the Cliffs; maybe he would have been able to convince Maelle that there's no reason to stay here. Maybe it would have been the better thing to do, pragmatically. On a selfish, purely emotional level, though, he's happy that he didn't.

"You can talk to me about your nightmares, when you have them." If he wants to. He doesn't want to pry, but it does seem like the healthy thing to do. In an attempt to lighten the mood, he adds, "Sensitive guys are a huge turn-on."

"For what is worth, uh. I'm glad I'm here, too." Gustave only stumbles there because it feels extremely cheesy to say. It's true, too, at the very least; he's glad he's here beneath the warm weight of Verso's arm, with a plan to try something to help Maelle.

(At some point the night before, he'd wondered if they were even capable of solving a problem that the artists on the outside of the Canvas couldn't. What were the odds that they could generate something new, something important like that?)

He clears his throat, tries to lean into the lightheartedness. "Maybe it would be easier for you to list things that don't turn you on?"

"When it comes to you?" Verso makes a contemplative face. "Can't think of anything."

He's laying it on a little thicker than he typically might, because Gustave clearly needs cheering after being put through the wringer both by Verso and his own mind, but it's not untrue. A not-insignificant amount of Verso's brainpower is dedicated just to thinking about him. Sometimes in very innocent ways, like picturing the crease Gustave gets between his bushy eyebrows when he's thinking very hard. Sometimes in not very innocent ways. He contains multitudes.

"Je suis fou de toi, don't you remember?"

Gustave is aware that Verso is being even softer with him than he might be usually, but — well, he doesn't hate it. He's never been hung up on masculinity, exactly, but he does care about seeming... reliable. Resilient. Like someone who is safe to lean on for support. He so desperately wants to be that for the people he loves.

But no one can be that all the time. It's nice to stop holding his breath.

"I do recall something about— what was it, the other morning? 'Making you crazy'?" He opens his eyes, turning his head to look at him again. "You can be very sweet."

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